About Me

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Las Pinas Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a local branch of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry. The President of Las Pinas CCI, Mohammad Yasin Badr, is my friend, my "classmate" in Rotary Intl. Dist 3830. The title of my paper was "Warming time out amidst climate hysteria" (22 slides, 1.5MB). It should be posted in our website within the week, www.minimalgovernment.net.

Another friend and "classmate" in rotary, Rodolfo "Inky" Reyes, who is a top official of the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC), is in Nairobi, Kenya, for an International Red Cross assembly and meeting. Inky said that if I were in their event, I would love the discussions on climate change (CC).

Well, if I were in Nairobi, I'm sure I would figure in endless debates with many participants there who believe in anthropogenic [man-made] global warming or AGW. The warmers have almost monopolized the discussion for at least 2 decades that it is considered a sacrilegious act to even question AGW, much more to present charts and data that contradict that claim. That is why they declared a few years ago, "There is no more debate, shut up." And it is that dictatorial mindset that somehow crippled public debate, until the global temp data -- tropospheric and surface station data, ocean heat and ocean level data, Arctic temp. and Arctic ice extent data, etc. -- showed that there was NO warming that is happening for the past 10 years. The data have a negative answer to the Rotary test, "Is it the truth?"

The shift from GW to CC was a face-saving act by the warmers. They saw the temperature data, the warming years that should happen now as predicted by their computer models did not happen. So CC is used more often while retaining the warming scare. That is, melting polar ice and Greenland ice (due to GW), that will result in rising ocean by up to 7 meters (about 2 storeys high) just 90 years from now, according to Al Gore, more hurricanes, more typhoons-more drought, etc.

The important point is: there is NO scientific consensus yet of AGW and CC. Big debates still happening.

So if there is no consensus, there should be NO global coercion in energy and environment policies. But here we are, debating how much carbon emission cut by whom and by when. Kill or over-tax cheap energy sources like coal, subsidize from tax money clean but expensive and low-power output wind farms and solar farms, create climate bureaucracies from the national to provincial levels (look at political has-been Heherson Alvarez, now a "climate czar" secretary). And a number of politicians made big money putting up ethanol and bio-diesel plants because all oil companies, big and small, are forced to buy from them because of the mandatory E10 gas and B5 diesel products.

Further money from CC alarmism -- carbon taxes (in the US, about $300 billion/year in Obama cap and trade bill alone, on top of existing federal environmental taxes, on top of existing state and county env'l taxes), carbon trading (in 2008, $128 billion from corporations in the EU, Japan, etc., excl. the US as the US is not a signatory to Kyoto), carbon tariff and eco-protectionism.

So it's the distortions in energy, environment, fiscal and trade policies in almost all countries in the world that are being targeted by the warmers. Ecological central planning is a pernicious game plan. Some of those central planners wish that we stop riding our cars soon and ride bicycles "to save the planet" while they're jet-setting almost every month in endless global climate meetings, not to mention national and provincial climate meetings.
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My related short papers recently:

(1) Warmers' Intellectual Dishonesty Uncovered

November 22, 2009

As incriminating emails and documents from the hacked website of, or stolen data from, the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in UK are spreading like wildfire in the web, the extent of intellectual dishonesty, if not intellectual prostitution, of a number of known warming scientists, are discovered. It's chilling to hear or read how those scientists deliberately alter or hide info that can show decline in global temperatures.

The most exposed scientists are Phil Jones, the head of CRU, and Michael Mann, main author of the "hockey stick" shape of global warming chart.

I wonder what alibi, if any, they can produce since the number of emails and documents that all seem to be original, are just too many? But if they admit that they indeed lied, that they indeed prostituted science for their political designs and desire for millions of dollars of research contracts, then that should be the end of their scientific career. They better go to the most isolated islands or the most uninhabitable place on Earth, with no internet or electricity, to escape global ridicule.

(2) No to Green Protectionism

November 17, 2009

Consumers need more choices and options, not more restrictions and prohibitions. Trade protectionism via carbon taxes and similar schemes limit choices and create more poverty, which push more poor people to use more environmentally-degrading technologies.

You have no doubt heard about the UN’s climate conference in Copenhagen next month. Chief among the bad ideas being touted by environmental activists and politicians in the run-up to that meeting is a proposal to permit trade restrictions on the grounds that they will help to prevent climate change (for example by encouraging governments to sign up and comply with an international agreement to restrict emissions). Pascal Lamy, director of the World Trade Organization, has even sanctioned this approach, saying that the world’s priorities should be “climate first and trade, second.” And – surprise surprise – uncompetitive industries and other vested interests have jumped on the bandwagon.